Nimra Bucha lauds ‘Joyland’ for real, raw depiction of men

'Let Joyland travel the world but let’s bring it back home again'

Actor Nimra Bucha was moved beyond belief after she finally got the chance to watch the award-winning film, Joyland. The Ms. Marvel star not only gave thumbs up to Saim Sadiq’s masterpiece but also lauded the film for showing men in a different light altogether.

Bucha penned her thoughts about the film in an online post. "In Pakistan, we women actors always complain of not being shown as we really are. We say there aren’t enough good parts for women. But the opposite is true too. Or truer. We never really see men either," she wrote on Instagram. 

"What we are shown is the devastation they wreak. But Saim Sadiq seems to have written a film about men where they actually offer themselves as they really are.”

 

 

 

 

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The Kamli actor further added that Joyland isn't perfect but she loves it for its imperfections. "Joyland pulsates with our lives and our beauty," she wrote.

"Biba played by Alina Khan reminds me of all the women I grew up watching on screen who were real and whose skin I could inhale and live in. When Ali Junejo moves on stage with all the other beautiful male dancers, it is a dance I have danced many times. It’s familiar and yet dizzying and glorious," she wrote. 

"Salmaan Peerzada could do nothing on screen for hours and I would still watch him. Joe Saade’s camera work has a humility that lets us see actors in their immediacy.”

Bucha ended the note with a commentary on how unnecessary the fight to release Joyland in its home country was -- and still is. 

“Yet Joyland embraces history in a peculiar way even as it departs from it. I love that I saw it in a cinema in Karachi, titillated instead of outraged by the silly censor blurs. No one film should have the burden of being the first and the best and greatest,” she exclaimed sarcastically. “But it should be able to take its place in showing human desire and everyday heroes."

“Let Joyland travel the world and go where it wants to but please let’s bring it back home again and again. It is ours and it is us,” she concluded, adding the hashtag #ReleaseZindagiTamashaNow.

Earlier this week, a disappointed Sadiq took to his Instagram, urging fans to not leak cinema footage of the film, "If you are sharing or creating or watching Joyland on online pirated links, you are no fan of cinema." 

He urged fans to wait for the film patiently. "If you live somewhere where Joyland is not playing in cinemas yet, you can wait. Please wait. It took us seven years to make this film. You can wait a few days and watch it without harming the filmmakers by pirating the film. Please," exclaimed Sadiq. 

Written and directed by Sadiq, Joyland has been produced by Apoorva Guru Charan, Sarmad Sultan Khoosat and Lauren Mann. It features Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Khan, Sarwat Gillani, Peerzada, Sohail Sameer and Sania Saeed. Shot in Lahore, it is a bittersweet tale of repressed desire and the quest for individual freedom.

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